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Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”